present at a second interview, the conditions of peace, drawn up in writing, were carried to his quarters, that he might formally ratify them.

He was lying on a bed when he received the men sent to him by the king of France, and they read him the treaty of peace, article by article. When they came to that which mentioned persons engaged secretly or openly on Richard's side, the king asked their names, that he might know how many there were whose homage he was forced to renounce. The first they named to him was John, his youngest son; on hearing this name, seized by an almost convulsive movement, he raised himself on his seat, and throwing around him a piercing and woe-struck glance, said, "Can it be true, that John my heart's darling, my favourite son, him whom I have loved above all the others, and for whose sake I have brought upon myself all these miseries, has also deserted me?" They replied that thus it was; that nothing could be more true. "Well," said he, falling back on his bed, and turning his face to the wall, "henceforward let things take their own course, I have no more care for myself or for the world." Some moments after, Richard approached the bed, and asked his father for the kiss of peace, in execution of the treaty. The king gave it him with an air of apparent calmness; but as Richard was going away, he heard his father murmur in a low voice: "If God would only grant that I might not die before avenging myself on thee!" On his arrival at the French camp, the count of Poictiers repeated these words to Philip and his courtiers, who raised shouts of laughter, and made many jokes on the good peace that had just been concluded between the father and son.

The king of England, finding his illness increase, had himself conveyed to Chinon, where, in a few days, he fell into a state bordering on death. In his last moments, he was heard to utter broken exclamations in allusion to his misfortunes, and the conduct of his sons. "Shame," he cried, "shame on a vanquished king! Cursed be the day I was born, and cursed of God be the sons I leave behind me." The bishops and churchmen who surrounded him, used all their efforts to make him retract this

malediction against his children; but he persisted in it till his latest breath.

After his death, his corpse was treated by his servants, in the same manner as that of William the Conqueror had been ; they all abandoned it, after having stripped it of its clothing, and carried off everything of value in the room and in the house. King Henry had wished to be interred at Fontevrault, a celebrated nunnery, some leagues south of Chinon; it was with difficulty that men were found to wrap the body in a shroud, and a carriage and horses to remove it. The corpse was already deposited in the great church of the abbey, awaiting the day of burial, when count Richard was apprised by public rumour of his father's death; he went to the church, and found the king lying in a coffin, with his face uncovered, and still showing by the contraction of the features, traces of violent agony. This sight caused the count of Poictiers an involuntary shuddering. He knelt down, and prayed before the altar, but rose in a few moments, after the interval of a paternoster, say the historians of that time, and went out, not to return. Contemporaries declare that from the moment Richard entered the church, till he left it, streams of blood flowed incessantly from both nostrils of the deceased. The next day the ceremony of sepulture took place; it was wished to decorate the corpse with some of the emblems of royalty; but the keepers of the treasury at Chinon refused, and, after much entreaty, sent only an old sceptre, and a ring of little value. For want of a crown a sort of diadem formed of the gold embroidery of a woman's garment was placed on the king's head, and in this strange tawdry attire, Henry, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, king of England, duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Brittany, count of Anjou and Maine, lord of Tours and Amboise, descended to his last abode.

A contemporary writer thinks he sees in the misfortunes of Henry II. a sign of the Divine vengeance upon the Normans, the tyrants of conquered England. He compares this miserable death to those of William the Conqueror, of Henry II.'s brothers, and of his two eldest sons, who all perished by a violent death in

the flower of their age. "This," he says, "was the punishment of their illegitimate reign." But, without agreeing with this superstitious opinion, it is at any rate certain, as far as concerns Henry II., that his miseries were the direct consequence of that fortune which had united the southern provinces of Gaul under his dominion. He had rejoiced over this increase of power as an increase of good fortune; he had given his sons the countries of others as their appanages, glorying to see his family reign over several nations of different race and manners, and to unite under the same political yoke those whom nature had divided. But nature did not lose her rights, and, on the first movement made by the people to recover their independence, division entered the family of the foreign king, who saw his children made instruments in the hands of his own subjects to be employed against himself, and who, troubled to his latest hour by domestic war, experienced, in dying, the most bitter sentiment that any man can carry to the tomb, that of dying by a parricide.

stature.

Character of Henry II.

From the "Quarterly Review."

PETER OF BLOIS.

"You are aware that his complexion and hair were a little red, but the approach of old age has altered this somewhat, and the hair is turning grey. He is of middle size, such that among short men he seems tall, and even among tall ones not the least in His head is spherical, as if it were the seat of great wisdom, and the special sanctuary of deep schemes. In size it is such as to correspond well with the neck and whole body. His eyes are round, and while he is calm, dove-like and quiet; but when he is angry, they flash fire, and are like lightning. His hair is not grown scant, but he keeps it well cut. His face is lionlike, and almost square. His nose projects in a degree propor

tionate to the symmetry of his whole body.

His feet are arched;

In one of his toes, flesh, and increases His hands by their wholly neglects all

his shins like a horse's; his broad chest and brawny arms proclaim him to be strong, active, and bold. however, part of the nail grows into the enormously, to the injury of the whole foot. coarseness show the man's carelessness; he attention to them, and never puts a glove on, except he is hawking. He every day attends mass, councils, and other public business, and stands on his feet from morning till night. Though his shins are terribly wounded and discoloured by constant kicks from horses, he never sits down except on horseback, or when he is eating. In one day, if need requires, he will perform four or five regular days' journeys, and by these rapid and unexpected movements often defeats his enemies' plans. He uses straight boots, a plain hat, and a tight dress. He is very fond of field sports, and if he is not fighting, amuses himself with hawking and hunting. He would have grown enormously fat, if he did not tame this tendency to belly by fasting and exercise. In mounting a horse and riding he preserves all the lightness of youth, and tires out the strongest men by his excursions almost every day. For he does not, like other kings, lie idle in his palace, but goes through his provinces examining into every one's conduct, and particularly that of the persons whom he has appointed judges of others. No one is shrewder in council, readier in speaking, more self-possessed in danger, more careful in prosperity, more firm in adversity. If he once forms an attachment to a man he seldom gives him up; if he has once taken a real aversion to a person, he seldom admits him afterwards to any familiarity. He has for ever in his hands bows, swords, hunting-nets, and arrows, except he is at council or at his bocks; for as often as he can get breathing time from his cares and anxieties he occupies himself with private reading, or, surrounded by a knot of clergymen, he endeavours to solve some hard question. Your king knows literature well, but ours is much more deeply versed in it. I have had opportunities of measuring the attainments of each in literature; for you know that the king of Sicily was my pupil for

two years. He had learnt the rudiments of literature and versification, and by my industry and anxiety reached afterwards to fuller knowledge. As soon, however, as I left Sicily, he threw away his books, and gave himself up to the usual idleness of palaces. But in the case of the king of England, the constant conversation of learned men, and the discussion of questions, makes his court a daily school. No one can be more dignified in speaking, more cautious at table, more moderate in drinking, more splendid in gifts, more generous in arms. He is pacific in

heart, victorious in war, but glorious in peace, which he desires for his people as the most precious of earthly gifts. It is with a view to this that he receives, collects, and dispenses such an immensity of money. He is equally skilful and liberal in erecting walls, towers, fortifications, moats, and places of enclosure for fish and birds. His father was a very powerful and noble count, and did much to extend his territory, but he has gone far beyond his father, and has added the dukedoms of Normandy, of Aquitaine, and Brittany, the kingdoms of England, Scotland, [?] Ireland, and Wales, so as to increase, beyond all comparison, the titles of his father's splendour. No one is more gentle to the distressed, more affable to the poor, more overbearing to the proud. It has always, indeed, been his study, by a certain carriage of himself like a deity, to put down the insolent, to encourage the oppressed, and to repress the swellings of pride by continual and deadly persecution. Although, by the customs of the kingdom, he has the chief and most influential part in elections [of bishops?], his hands have always been pure from anything like venality. But these and other excellent gifts of mind and body with which nature has enriched him, I can but briefly touch. I profess my own incompetence to describe them ;-and believe that Cicero or Virgil would labour in vain."

*

In a letter to a certain archdeacon or dean (Roger) who had business with the king, Peter of Blois mentions that he had lately occasion to go to his majesty on matters respecting the church of